A journal about teaching English near the DMZ in Gangwon-do, South Korea.
"Teaching is love."

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Teaching the kids how to rumble / Guitar Fridays

We were at lunch
around six weeks ago when Ms Lee the coteacher asked me if I could help teach
guitar to the students during the Friday "club activities."* She’s a
guitar player herself and had started teaching the students when the semester
began in March. I normally use Friday afternoons to prepare for the next week’s
classes, but I jumped at the
chance because it meant more time to play guitar and a chance to share some
music with the students.* I asked about the skill levels. "Mostly
beginners," she said. She added a second later, “So, is it okay?” Of course
it was! When could I start? As it turned out, I could start that very day. The
clock on the wall said half past noon. Club activities would begin at two
o'clock, which meant that there was enough time to run home, grab the guitar, and get
back to school. I did just that.

We got going
at two o’clock. I quickly saw that the
students were indeed beginners. They were busying themselves with awkwardly
moving between open chords, finding their fingering and their rhythm. The boys
and girls (five total) clearly wanted to get playing, but they needed help with
chords and rhythm first. Lee and I ran through the standard open chords
to warm up. The students followed along. They did their best to keep up with
us.

The only way to learn
guitar is to play it, but an even better way is to learn from actual songs
because they provide a context for learning. In the case of helping the
students learn the chords elementary chords D, A, and G major, Ms. Lee led the
students through "Reflection" [회상] by the Korean group rock group Sanulrim [산울림] because it rides on
an easygoing D-A-D-G chord progression. I didn't know the song before she
played it, but I instantly took to it. The students had been practicing the
song before, but they were still struggling with the steady rhythm and the
changes.

Lee also asked me if I
had anything to teach the kids.Immediately, Link Wray's classic 1958 instrumental "Rumble" came to mind:If the kids were going to
learn basic chords, they should learn them from the classics. Moreover, “Rumble,”
while an instrumental, represented a key piece of musical (and American)
history. It brought the power chord to the masses.

I got to work on teaching
the song. Lee herself didn't
know know the song, so I jumped to that great music resource, Youtube, and
found someone's "video" of it. We listened. Heads nodded. I demonstrated
the famous D-D-E and D-D-A riffs
a few times. Everyone caught on.
Now, as any guitarist would know,
"Rumble" has a tricky B7 chord followed by a descending E scale run.
The E scale isn't difficult to play, but it takes practice to get right. The B7 though...after
14 years of playing, it’s still a hard chord to get right!
Still, we gamely ran through the song. I knew something was
clicking because Ms. Lee and one
of the boys in the group latched right on to that descending scale run and wouldn't stop playing it.
Repetition’s one key to learning. Guitar and English have that in common: The
only way to get better is to practice, practice, and practice.

And from there, we
jammed. We jammed on “Rumble,” we jammed on “Reflection,”
and we jammed on exchanging our music. I learned a cool Korean number; they
picked up a classic American one.

Notes:

*Teachers, take note: If there is any way whatsoever that you can
contribute something to your school’s various programs, do so. It will benefit
you for several reasons:

You’re an integral part of the
community.

You’re not just there to teach.
Commitment to work and considering work as family mean plenty over here.

You get more time to do stuff you enjoy.

* Every Friday afternoon, the students get two or three hours
away from regular classes to pursue extra-curricular things like music and
board games.

* I'll have to post some stuff on Sanulrim, for their first three LPs are quality fusions of 60s pop and 70s rock jams.